With such a maddening gap between posts, I had better be prepared with a legitimate reason; perhaps a catastrophe of some sort, or a bankruptcy, or the onset of the Saviour’s Season. Or a simple affliction perhaps. Thereby hangs a tale. The annual metamorphosis of digits into its sequential sibling, in an entirely predictable orderly manner inherent in the Gregorian Christian calendar, is cause enough to evoke a crisis.
That most personal, yet at once eternal, moment took place as if an ethereal, passing intangible took form. This fleetingness that materialized as the doors of the elevator opened into the rabid workaday morning decided to cling on to my company, much as a hungry kitten would. I immediately recognized this creature, of course, for who it was: that half of me that longed to rid itself of this island nation’s hold.
Long confined in expectancy, it, too, at last has a birth-time and date: Friday, 16th December, 2005, close to a quarter to 8. I wonder if the birthing of this originary instant, full of wishes and claims, would be better imprinted according to where longs for; in that case, and to be precise, it properly occurred late one Thursday afternoon (Pacific Time).
So now I scheme for my other half’s well-being: that it will survive its non-descript birth to become the person that I had hoped to fashion of myself, much as any well-intentioned paternal being aims at perfecting the specimen. Much as how popular Darwinism understands itself.
This island has been a home of sorts for four adult years, a relationship longer than any other I’ve developed with any random stack of bricks, in any town, country, region or continent; we have endured each other as would co-workers in a firm – professionally, which is hardly the basis for a symbiotic relationship at the heart of a home, or of any “belonging”. It is (far too readily) possible and necessary to write venomously of this place; to dispense all pretense of balance or fairness, and instead write in beautifully sadistic tones, with full sincerity, of soul-numbing barrenness.
